I took this attitude the first time Trump was elected, and boy was I wrong. Not this time. Now, I’m seriously considering what his options might be for eliminating the election in 2028. He needs to clean the military brass of people disloyal to him, which he can easily do as Commander in Chief. Once he’s got a loyal military, there’s virtually nothing he can’t do; and this SCOTUS will let him do anything he wants, so long as it aligns with the view of Evangelical Christians, who have been wanting a theocracy for decades. He can conjure the specter of “Democrat corruption” to justify eliminating any opposition politicians as an official act, completely re-stock the FBI with loyalists to wage any legal battles he needs to make his actions seem legitimate and “official,” and arrest any problematic judges under the same “corruption” myth so that he can then replace them with loyalists.

Honestly, we’ve seen this playbook before in countries that are now dictatorships and Trump has already made it quite clear he wants to be a dictator. There is absolutely no reason to be convinced this will not happen. It might not happen, but there’s no reason to think definitely will not.